Bredesen: Time will be his judge

Cites pride in education, economy; letdown over health care

NASHVILLE -- Gov. Phil Bredesen says he will leave office next month proudest of his work in education, economic development and land conservation -- and disappointed over failing to transform TennCare into a model for health care.

He said that when the state eventually needs to raise revenue after cutting spending wherever possible, officials should look at eliminating some of the hundreds of sales tax exemptions rather than trying to enact a state income tax. When the state last considered an income tax a decade ago in the previous administration, he said it paralyzed state government.

Bredesen leaves office Jan. 15 with Knoxville Mayor Bill Haslam's inauguration as Tennessee's 49th governor. Born in upstate New York in 1943 and educated at Harvard University, he moved to Nashville in 1975 with his wife Andrea Conte, started a health management company and made a fortune when he sold it a decade later. He was mayor of Nashville from 1991 to 1999 and won two terms as governor in 2002 and 2006.

In media interviews and a retrospective speech to the Nashville Exchange Club before Christmas, Bredesen, 67, said he has no intention to run for office again, doesn't think any federal appointment is likely and "enjoyed being governor immensely."

"I will miss it but I think it's perfectly appropriate for me to move on after eight years. I plan to wait until January to see what the world looks like and decide what to do. I'm not going to retire. I'm not going to be a dilettante. I've already turned down umpteen board offers. I'm going to find something constructive to do. I feel I've got one more good career in me. We'll see where that is."

Bredesen said it's up to others to assess failures of his tenure. The biggest criticisms have been over removing 170,000 people from TennCare and scaling back its benefits. But that stabilized a program he said was headed for bankruptcy.

His administration has also come under fire for increasing the secrecy around tax breaks and incentives to lure big companies to Tennessee. State legislators will consider requiring more disclosure of future deals.

Bredesen said he believes Memphis's future is bright and cited Mayor A C Wharton's and County Mayor Mark Luttrell's work to end the city's racial politics.

"When I became governor, I can't say that I knew Memphis very well. I've really come to like it. I find it a very energetic city.... It's like Chicago: it's wild and wooly and energetic and the politics are more like Chicago politics than Nashville politics.

"I actually think it's a wonderful environment, particularly if they can get over some of the racial issues in its politics which I think is starting to happen. The two mayors down there now, I really think have got the ability to start moving things in that direction. I think Memphis has a great future and is a great city."

Bredesen said he's proudest of the work in education, economic development and bringing 350,000 acres of land much of it on the Cumberland Plateau under the state's protection.

The state has raised education standards and requirements for high school graduation, expanded pre-kindergarten, re-drew the funding formulas for K-12 public schools for more equity and for higher education to add graduation rates to enrollment-based funding, spent over $1 billion on college construction and raised the role of community colleges in the system.

But taxpayer funding for colleges and universities has decreased, forcing tuition and fees up, and the governor says more aid for students who don't qualify for lottery scholarships is needed.

"I'm real proud of the stuff we've done in education and in a way, I think the achievement is getting some foundation stones in place that are still going to take a lot of work in the future to make happen," he said.

Bredesen said his job creation efforts focused on recruiting companies in future growth sectors, to create a "critical mass" that leads to more jobs as Tennessee did years ago with the health-care and auto industries.

"I think the identification of the green-energy sector and getting it tied in a bipartisan way not to global warming or environmental issues but to job creation and wealth for the people of Tennessee, I think is a good bet for the future." It paid off with the successful recruitment of two large polysilicon plants for the solar power industry.

Bredesen said his biggest disappointments involve TennCare, which he said started crashing before his 2002 election.

"I really wanted to take that and turn it into a broader health care system divorced from just being for poor people, and done right and modern. It wasn't going to happen."

He said neither the regulators overseeing the federal government's two-thirds share of TennCare's financing nor the advocacy groups for TennCare enrollees were willing to agree to changes he sought to streamline the program that covered one out of every five Tennesseans when he took office.

"My big mistake was in thinking that with kindness and sweet reason I could work with the advocacy groups and we could all work out a program together. I was just naïve. They were not going to do that. That is a huge unfulfilled hope that I had about the office."

The governor's critics argue that he unfairly blamed advocates for the poor like Nashville lawyer Gordon Bonnyman for failing to reform TennCare.

The Democratic governor said he believes his Republican successor will do well but there is much unfinished business by design.

"Things like education are not the work of one governor. If we're serious about it, it must be over the next 20 years, through Republicans and Democrats," he said.

When Haslam takes office, it will be the first time since Reconstruction the GOP controls both houses of the General Assembly and the governor's office simultaneously. Bredesen told the Exchange Club that Tennesseans will be better served if the new leaders manage from the center.

"If we just continue running a sensible government -- and there's some challenges to that, like how many guns you can pack into this room -- if we keep focused on education to give the kids the tools they need, and pay attention to creating jobs and continue focusing on the basics, we're going to do fine."

Bredesen said his ultimate goal is for Tennesseans to have higher expectations than when he arrived.

"I think that if the people of Tennessee have higher expectations of what they expect from state government, higher expectations of what we can achieve, more of a sense of possibility, I would consider it to have been successful. Time will tell on that."

-- Richard Locker: (615) 255-4923

Political Scientists Assess The Bredesen Era

Marcus Pohlmann, Rhodes College: Given all he was up against, he did a pretty remarkable job advancing any of his priorities. Impediments included an ever "reddening" state, actually electing its first Republican majorities in the state legislature. His own election and re-election statewide as a Democrat was a major electoral anomoly for contemporary Tennessee. On top of that was the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression.

Lisa Huffstetler, University of Memphis: Gov. Bredesen's drastic reform of TennCare, while politically unpopular, was very necessary and has kept Tennessee from being in even more dire financial straits during the economic downturn of the past few years. Second, his style of leadership has been very nonpolarizing even when faced with a legislature controlled by the opposite party.

John Geer, Vanderbilt University: When Phil Bredesen won the governorship in 2002, he came to the office with the reputation of being an effective manager and leader. ... If he had been able to seek a third term, he would have surely won handily.

John Vile, MTSU: Bredesen has had a fairly good run as governor, although some of his responses -- basically asking "why would anyone question my motives?" -- toward the end of his second term suggests that he occasionally had a "tin ear" as to how his actions were perceived by others. Bredesen seems largely responsible for getting Race to the Top monies for the state, but whether this will be an ultimate good or merely a Trojan horse for greater federal controls, remains to be seen. ... He certainly had to make some tough funding decisions ... and appears to have left the state on fairly solid fiscal footing.